about
In 2006, my dear friend Norman Engel and I conceived of an idea of tapping the popera market with an album of Christmas favourites. Alcohol and some degree of hubris were involved. We began recording an album entitled "Norman Angel – Christmas Angel," which we obviously thought was hilarious, but which we secretly hoped would exploit people's sentimental taste and sell truckloads of copies in the suburbs. Some of Norman's other close friends invested money in the project, and we set to finishing off the record and unleashing it on an unsuspecting, Yuletide popera-hungry public. Unfortunately, due in no small part to my own youthful inexperience and incompetence, I made what might charitably be called an undercooked record of maudlin schmaltz, and consequently got too close to Christmas 2006 without finding the necessary distribution network to adequately market it to the rest homes where it might have been a festive smash. Norman and our friends who invested in the project were left with a mountain of compact discs, and all of our parents and grandparents received copies of "Norman Angel – Christmas Angel" under the tree that year.
Amid the other songs, which Norman and I were discussing on the phone the other day as being "disastrous," (and which I take full responsibility for), one song stood out as having some actual life and inspiration within it – and, as Norman says in this video, was "completely different to anything else we've done" – "Jingling Christmas Eve." It's a jaunty song I wrote, inspired by a friend's Christmas Eve one night stand. It's got at least one appalling double entendre in it.
It's $2 or more to get a copy – the second dollar, and every dollar you may choose to give above that, will go to the Christchurch City Mission, towards helping provide some Christmas cheer for those in need.
lyrics
Sleigh bells, a jingling symphony
I thought you'd spend the night with me
Make this a jingling Christmas Eve
Let those bells jingle all night through
And jingle in the morning too
Make this a jingling Christmas Eve.
I saw you at the bar looking lonely
It was December 24
You looked like a girl who'd own a pony,
I'd never ridden one of those before
But you – you were a lady
A woman who I could not get near
So I just stared into my whisky
And watched the ice cubes disappear.
Sleigh bells, a jingling symphony
I thought you'd spend the night with me
Make this a jingling Christmas Eve
Let those bells jingle all night through
And jingle in the morning too
Make this a jingling Christmas Eve.
Your smile was like an actress
From the cast of Home and Away
And I wanted to be in your home
At the start of Christmas Day
But you – you were a lady
A woman who I could not get near
So I just stared into my whisky
And watched the ice cubes disappear.
Sleigh bells, a jingling symphony
I thought you'd spend the night with me
Make this a jingling Christmas Eve
Let those bells jingle all night through
And jingle in the morning too
Make this a jingling Christmas Eve.
credits
released December 13, 2016
license
all rights reserved